YOU MAY NOT have noticed it as it has been such a steady and smooth reversal of fortunes but Asia's export depression of last year has turned into an export boom and the volume of exports now exceeds all past records.
Before the details, however, two caveats. Trade figures go up and down so sharply from month to month that, to get any idea of a trend, you need to smooth them out with a minimum of a three-month moving average, which I have used here. Secondly, I have taken Japan out of the sample as it inhabits a planet of its own.
Now the first chart. The red line shows you that Asian export growth (three-month moving average) was 18.3 per cent year on year last month, quite a change from a negative 14.3 per cent a year before. Admittedly only the three biggest exporters have reported for September but they account for two thirds of the total and that is enough to estimate the rest.
And here is a twist. This growth rate is for the value of exports in US dollar terms but export prices almost everywhere have declined in recent years. The best benchmark for how much they have declined is the United States price index for imports from newly industrialised Asian countries, which says that what cost US importers US$1 at the beginning of 1996 now costs them only 77 US cents.
Deflate the straight US dollar value of Asian exports by this index and the growth rate you then get for the volume of exports is represented by the blue line in the first chart. It was 21.7 per cent in September and consistently higher than the value figures for the last six years.
Look at it another way. The value of Asian exports last month (three-month moving average) was US$83.6 billion, just a smidgen less than the previous record in October two years ago.